Friday August 4th 2023

The rain managed to change my plans again today. It was cloudy and humid most of the day, but in the early afternoon a real deluge of a thunderstorm hit this area. It was part of a line of storms that moved through northwest to southeast. Overall the temperature remained comfortable never getting above the eighties.

I planned to drive around Jacksonville to the southwest suburbs this afternoon. My mission was to pick up my mail from the mail service. Just as I was preparing to leave the thunderstorm moved in. I waited for it to pass through before departing, but mother nature had other plans. As soon as I got onto the Interstate the sky opened up again. People don’t know what to do in heavy rain on an interstate. Some put on their four way flashers and slow way down, but keep moving. Other people seem to just pull over into the breakdown lane and stop. I believe the correct thing to do is slow down, maintain your spacing with the tail lights in front and continue on as best you can. It certainly isn’t accelerate and pass everybody at eighty miles an hour. Every option and then some was happening today.

This was a real white knuckle, intense alert mode period of driving. There was a lot of standing water on the road in some construction areas. Visibility was down to about 100 feet assuming the car in front had its tail lights on. I found an exit off the interstate and looped back to my RV home on back roads. The rain was over as I got back closer to home. It wasn’t worth the risk to continue with the uncertain path of the storms. My mail will wait until Monday.

Later in the afternoon it was dry and cooler, but still very humid. I took an extended walk around the RV park. Once again it doesn’t look like there are many new arrivals for the weekend, but a few of the RVs that are empty during the week had people around in the evening. This isn’t really a weekend kind of RV park. It is primarily used by people staying an extended period of time or by travelers going north or south on Interstate 95 stopping for a night or two.